


A Common Build

by starkraving



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/pseuds/starkraving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Historical archivists were never made for war. This is the misconception that will cost a revolutionary his victory. Pre-war, Orion Pax&Megatronus one-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Common Build

_“Historical archivists are a singular build unaltered since the times of the ancients. They were never built to be anything but what they are: watchers and witnesses, fit only to keep records in the basements of Iacon. That is all I have to say on the subject of the Council’s puppet Prime.”_

\- Senator Ratbat (media interview excerpt)

***

“I take issue with your misconception of your own framework, Pax.”

Orion looks up from the data pad he is going through and gives his friend a familiar look that describes in his unerring patience and calm that he is both unimpressed by this assessment and ready to dismiss it without expansion of context. Megatronus is casting a very large shadow over the seated archivist, who has been working his way through a series of pulled public files that he is permitted to place on a mobile data device… and quite a few that he is not permitted to take out, but has anyway at the request of his now-brother. The gladiator, in the time that he has known the historian, is singularly responsible for Orion’s his new rule-breaking habits. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says somewhat indulgently. 

Statements like that generally preface a Megatronus-style ideology speech. The unpolished ones tended to get lengthy too. Orion has been seated, quietly going through holo-read outs and data sheets at his desk while Megatronus tuned up his latest armor upgrade – an unsanctioned class one mass density shift. He weighs almost three times the legal limit for a mech of his caste now, enough to get him arrested technically, but no one will dare point this out now for fear of political blow-back. The law cohorts have stopped policing the public data-link rallies now – rather than firing on civilian worker mech for unlawful gathering – unable to stop the dissemination of data, of ideas, among the populace. 

The movement has grown beyond them. Its memetic now, in the minds and the collective network of the people, a shared social software, logi-tech shift toward a great divergence the like of which has not been seen in eons… and Orion would know. His function necessitates that he would know. But here and now, Megatronus’ general EM field is amused against the edge of Orion’s sensors. 

“I will show you want I mean then. Get up.”

“I’m quite settled, thank you.”

“You will not be,” says the gladiator thoughtfully, “if I flip that table, Orion.”

The archivist heaves a heavily ex-vent, but gets up with no ribbing, subspacing the data pad and standing up from the desk. “Let us hope,” he says, “that you do not flip tables while talking with Senators at Iacon. They aren’t accustomed to it like I am.” 

“I only flipped a table that one time. For emphasis.” 

“You ‘emphasized’ a hole in my wall the size of a transport.”

“Yes, but you remember what I said, now don’t you?”

No arguing with that. Orion followed Megatronus out of his study and down the halls of the gladiator’s headquarters. They’d moved their base of operations into the upper plates of Kaon, nearer to the bridge and transport hubs that could take them to and from Iacon more easily. The new space has been sub-let for their use at no cost – the gratitude of mechanisms eager to forward the gladiator’s cause and to be remembered in the records that would no doubt follow in the halls of Iacon. Orion himself viewed his role here as witness – to recount all that Megatronus did, unskewed by political and class-based motive. 

One of the back rooms is a sparring room. Megatronus has not yet left the gladiatorial arena entirely for the political – the fights provided massive opportunity for file-sharing and data sync among the audience and a ready platform for his ideas. The walls and rubberized friction mats, though new, carry the scarring of combat and weapon usage and the air always retains the ghost of heated metal, the high-frequency hum of overdrive, and impact. Orion’s EM frequency quirks with query and Megatronus glances at him. 

“I find it somewhat ironic that an Iacon historical archivist has not looked up the functionality lineage of his own frame type.”

“It’s the same standard frame type for all mechanisms of my function class. There is nothing to look up.”

“No,” said Megatronus, moving away from Orion, hands behind his back, “I imagine the data has been discarded by your forebears… but a record exists nevertheless.”

Orion tilted his head, the pitch of whirr of his engines taking on a patient idling hum. “Where?”

Megatronus turns suddenly, catching the other mech by the shoulder, gripping the sweep of alloy between the archivist’s neck cabling and his shoulder plates. “Here,” he said and when Orion offers him a perfectly impatient look the gladiator smiles slightly and takes him by his opposite elbow joint as well. “And here,” he says, offering no further explanation. There is amusement in the pale blue glass and energy configurations of his friend’s optics, a very clear note of amusement in the pentatonic patterns of his engines. 

“I do not follow,” says Orion, attempting to shrug off the other mech’s grip, but the gladiator does not let go of him. 

“It’s been muted somewhat, the original format,” says Megatron, tugging the slighter mech around and maneuvering him backwards, a move which would have thrown the gyro-stablizers of most Iacon-builds, but Pax catches his pedes immediately and backs up with the gladiator’s momentum. The move is mass-memory instinctive despite Orion having no such neural patterning flashed into him. He doesn’t notice though, only arches a brow ridge at the taller mech who smirks. “You’re a bit big for a data-crunch bot, are you not?”

“I was sparked an archivist,” say Orion when they stop moving, dead centre to the edges of the floor matting. His EMF is wary. “This is the traditional Iacon-build for my function-class.”

“Like I said,” repeats Megatronus, “a bit heavy for your function.” His grip on Orion’s elbow joint increases suddenly, pressure against the plating hard enough to set off sub-dermal sensors and put a jolt up his neural lines to his shoulder. Orion jerks, opposite arms snapping up instantly, the heel of his hand ramming against the gladiator’s offending wrist-rotor, and breaking the grip. This is the work of an astro-klik, so Orion is backing up from the other mech before fully registering what he’s done. Megatronus only rumbles with amusement. “The hydraulic precision to break [i]my[/i] grip… have on an estimate what that might me?” 

“You’re humoring me and it’s not greatly appreciated,” says Orion, somewhat defensive that his comrade has incited him to defend himself, even it had been a very minor reflex. He steps back one pace, angling his body slightly to the gladiator. “What is the point you are making, Megatronus?”

“The history of your frame-type is in your frame, Orion. You simply don’t look.”

“There is nothing to see.”

“I imagine that lack of self-awareness is trained,” says the gladiator, in a slightly darker tone, “not natural.” When Orion begins to refute social conditioning as the source of his beliefs, Megatrons speaks over the archivist who whirrs in exasperation “I’ve run a few scans. Both casual and medical class on you; your neuralcircuiry is triple the necessary sensitivity for mechanisms of the same caste and function class. To put that in perspective, you can dodge a killing blow and by quick-twitch alone fend off an assault, but you use your hardware for little more than button pushing.”

“That’s not true and if your angle is to prove it to me by fighting me, then you’ll find it a poor argument,” says Orion sharply, EMF gone flat with disapproval. The nephrite blue glow in his stare brightens somewhat, an inkling of overdrive at the attack. 

“I’m not going to fight you,” chuckles Megatronus, somewhat patronizingly. “I know how you disapprove.”

Orion revs. “Then I find this thread of argumentation pointless.”

A flash of impatience jolting into Megatronus’ field and he crosses the space between them in two long strides, this time catching the archivist by the wrist and pulling his own arm up in front of him. “Then look where I tell you. Physicality may not mean much to you, Orion, because you spend so much of your life confined to the record halls, cataloging past wrongs and projecting the trajectory of this generation’s error, but just look for a moment into the structure of your own design. This is not a motivational speech, Orion, it’s fact you are ignoring.” 

“I am not ignoring anything,” says the archivist, clearly offended. For his function-class, misconstruing facts and events is unthinkable… or at least unthinkable for him. 

“You are.” Megatronus’ other hand closes on Pax’s arm again, thumb pressing into the gap between his fore and upper arm plating into the bare run of cabling and neuralwiring beneath the red exo-plating, pressing but not hard enough this time to be painful. “Look,” he barks, a pulse of contact energy sparking off the gladiator’s claws, stimulating direct activation of hydraulic flex. “The wiring here is protected, reinforced where the plates go thin. No Iacon mechanism has need of such. The construct,” he says, grip moving to Orion’s wrist, “of your rotor joints is four times the necessary density – built not to break. Your plating itself is too hard. Your build is too tall, too agile. Half the gladiators I’ve trained in my time, after vorns of refit and out-modding, were never as finely wired as you for the task.”

“I am not a combat-build,” says Orion tone forceful. 

“Your basic anatomy suggests otherwise.”

Orion yanks his arm free and turns away, plates gone hot with temper, the metal of his body humming with the complex note of his anger and the sub-sonic chord of hurt, insulted by the implication that he is capable (if only physically) of violence. It is a backhanded insult that Megatronus does not address, the underlying nuance that suggests his friend does not in whole approve of what Megatonus is at the most basic level: A warrior. A fighter. Megatronus cycles his vents. 

“This is only to prove a point,” said Megatronus, moving to stand at Orion’s shoulder. “The halls of Iacon themselves are not untouched by corruption and arrogance. They consider you an ornament… and so well subdued that they take no precautions with you because it is more pleasing to them to see an Iacon-bred face keeping their records, an unchanging fixture in the archives, differentiated from your predecessor in no way at all and so inundated to your duty that you don’t see that your original design was not the keeping of the record, but the protection of it. From all comers. Keeping of the truth at all costs, absolutely not like it is now: allowing senators and politicians to alter entries as they see fit. Yours is an Elite Guard frame, a soldier’s design, a guardian.”

“I do not need a combat frame to prevent that,” said Orion quietly. “Simply refusing to give into the dictation of others is enough.”

“Yes,” says Megatronus, drawling now. “I imagine you’re quite the inconvenience. Refusing bribes and not taking the hints when powerful benefactors encourage alteration.” 

“You suggest my predecessors were not so bound?”

“Archivists are sparked one at a time to replace their forebears,” says Megatronus, voice subdued of its former humor. “There are no cohorts for your kind because too many of you is too dangerous. They might see the pattern of corruption and become visionaries.”

“We don’t need violence to uphold our convictions,” says Orion, skipping directly to what he perceives to be the heart of the issue. He turned to half-face his friend, urgency in his voice, in his EMF. “History need not repeated.”

“Orion,” says Megatronus, calmly, unmovable, “if you are a mechanism with strong convictions of anything, you will find opposition. Conflict will always follow and if your convictions are powerful enough, and necessary enough, then violence will follow. Violence has already been visited upon our people and you know. It was this violence that brought you to me in the first place, to see it for yourself, to find it necessary to fight back even if it’s only in your friendship with me.”

Orion waits a moment, tense, then, “Are you going to flip a table now so I remember this conversation?”

“No,” says Megtronus dryly. “Do you think it would help?”

“No. Not really.” 

“We are all, each of us, a history in and of ourselves, Orion.” Megtronus studies his face. “Remember that if nothing else.”

A beat. “I will.”


End file.
